Re: [asa] Miracle healing?

I am almost positive that this is not a miracle. There are not enough
details given to know.

Before dissecting what details we have from this article, let me just say
that it appears that this was a woman that had a cardiac arrest, got
resuscitate by MET, was transferred to the hospital where they put her in
hypothermia, was thought to have suffered anoxic brain injury, was declared
dead by brain criteria, was being maintained on a ventilator to allow organ
donation, and then woke up.

How can such a thing happen? Well death by brain criteria is just an
arbitrary definition of death. It is a series of examinations that try to
detect residual brain activity, and rule out reversible causes of loss of
brain activity. In this case, I suspect that they either didn't use
rigorous enough tests to determine absence of brain activity, or were not
careful about ruling out reversible causes. There is no mention in the
article of what her neurological examination was, just that she had "no
neurological function." Now, that comment was made by an internist, not a
neurologist, so I have no idea what he really means by no neurological
function, and in fact he could have been mistaken. There is mention of "no
brain waves for 17 hours". Again, that comment doesn't really make much
sense without more detail. Was she hooked up to an EEG and was it monitored
for 17 hours? That is not at all what is typically done. If a patient
meets brain death criteria, via examination, and EEG can be done looking for
a flat line EEG, that is no brain waves. But that is usually just a
sampling of brain waves done over 40 minutes or so. And having a flat EEG
alone is not an indication of brain death people placed in comas via
anesthesia, anticonvulsants, and hey wow, by intentional hypothermia, can
have flat EEG's that are completely reversible.

My interpretation from the video, is that she arrested at 130 am, and
remained unresponsive for the next 17 hours, during which some of that time
she was in induced hypothermia.

If someone legitimately meets brain death criteria, hypothermia is one of
the things that you have to rule out as possibly reversible cause before you
declare someone dead. A well known clinical example of this is children
that drown. They often appear dead, they meet brain death criteria, but
because of the hypothermia usually associated with this, condition is
sometimes reversible. If they declared her brain dead after inducing
hypothermia without giving her time to warm up,... well that is just so
stupid it is hard to believe.

And again here is where the article makes no sense. Regarding the rigor
mortis. The article says that they said good bye and removed all of the
tubes. But they didn't remove the endotracheal tube because she was still
on the ventilator! If someone is on a ventilator they are still alive, at
least the body is still alive, even if they are dead by brain criteria. I
can assure you that they were not ventilating a corpse with no heartbeat,
and no pulse. I know this because they were discussing organ donation.
Once the body dies, the heartbeat stops, there is no pulse etc, all of the
organs deteriorate rapidly, and would not be used for organ donation. The
ventilator is kept going in people who are somatically alive (pulse,
heartbeat etc.) but brain dead. Therefore it is impossible for rigor mortis
to have set in because the body was still alive because they were
considering organ donation.

I suspect that the family that gave this information to the reporter was
confused about what was going on, or that the reporter just got it wrong.
It also sounds like the doctors may have made a mistake in their brain death
determination, but I would need a lot more reliable information before even
considering this a miracle.

This is a good example though of the benefit of induced hypothermia. This
is the treatment that Kevin Everett received in the field during transport
to the hospital. He went from catastrophic, life-threatening spinal cord
injury, to being able to walk again.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3012739

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christine Smith" <christine_mb_smith@yahoo.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 2:23 PM
Subject: [asa] Miracle healing?

> I'm no doctor, but if rigor mortis really was setting
> in and there was zero brain function, I don't see how
> this couldn't be a true miracle :) --any doubters out
> there want to put out an alternative explanation??
> http://www.newsnet5.com/health/16363548/detail.html
>
> In Christ,
> Christine (ASA member)
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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>

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Received on Fri May 23 21:13:42 2008